Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine News

The beginning of 2004 has seen a massive upheaval in the search engine world, all of which
directly affect you as a potential website owner.

The Major Change

Whereas previously Google dominated most of the market, powering AOL, Yahoo, as well as providing
the advanced search features of several other major sites, this situation has changed
completeley.

In March, Yahoo launched its own search engine,
ending a long relationship with Google.
Early results have been very good, in some cases better than Google's, mainly due to Google's
wave of result degrading 'updates'.

MSN is also finally bringing their own search engine online.
Early results from that also look quite promising, and seem to indicate
that Microsoft is serious about creating a good quality search engine.

You no longer can focus on only one search engine when
creating your search engine strategy, but have to consider at least 3 major ones: Google, Yahoo,
and MSN.

Ask Jeeves/Teoma currently is used for 5% or so of searches, Google around 50% (counting their main account,
AOL, which is 15% of current US searches), while Yahoo and MSN split the remainder (30/15%) (read more).

The other major players have fallen by the wayside, Altavista, Hotbot, and Lycos are now either absorbed
by their competitors or have gone out of business.

Google

Google itself has been modifying its main search engine steadily
since the end of 2003. This has resulted in wildly swinging site positioning, as well as a marked decrease
in the quality of their results (as of early 2004).

We look forward to Google finally settling down somewhat towards the middle of 2004, although early
indications are that they are not doing well.

Yahoo's departure leaves Google with only AOL as a major client, and, more importantly, opens up the search engine market
from the near monopoly position Google has enjoyed since it rose to dominate the search engine world.

In early 2004 the world of search engines started to change radically. One result of this is
that solid, high quality web pages, with good content, will be rewarded even more highly than
ever was the case in the past.

SEOs Tricks of the Trade

While there are people out there who claim to be able to give you top ten rankings (so called Search
Engine Optimizers), they almost always employ tricks which, if discovered, could end up getting your site banned
from the major search engines.

We do not employ such tricks, since the basics tend to serve very well in achieving high
rankings. And remember, if you do employ tricks, your competitors can fairly easily find those,
then might turn your site in to the major search engines, and then you are stuck, and are probably
better off starting all over again.

The Basics

The best way to get good placement is to make sure your pages are made
with correct coding techniques. Do not use images, especially in navigation links. Create the
pages always with this rule in mind: search engines only read text files.

One of the most important elements in getting good placement is still in having meaningful
link phrases connecting the various parts of your site.

Getting good results is also a direct consequence of having little extra HTML to clutter up your
pages, and making your content easily accessible to any search engine that might try to index
your site. Don't make it harder on them than it needs to be.

Our pages are written to get rid of as much
superfluous code on your pages as possible. Extensive use of CSS helps this goal to be reached, as
does minimimal use of tables in the construction of your site's pages.

High Quality Links

Having people link to your site is very important. This does not mean link exchanges. Reciprocated links
do not count for nearly as much as one way links to your site.

And links from major websites in their areas (ideally also related to your site's subject matter)
count for much more than links from small, irrelevant sites. But
all incoming links are invaluable.

So how do you get links to you? Content, of course. Quality content will make other sites link to you. It's
that simple.

This is not to discount the value of any link to your site, even a link exchange. The more links to your site,
the better.

Content is King

It's impossible to emphasize this point enough. Good content is more important than anything else.
Quality content that changes and is added to routinely is extremely important when you are looking to increase
your websites' visitor numbers through search engines.

The true secret to long lasting search engine success is in always creating and updating your content.
The more you do this, the more search engines will tend to revisit your site, and reindex your pages.

Ideally, you should be adding pages on a regular basis. This is where having a site that is made to
be expandable from the beginning really can pay off in the long run.

Adjusting to the New Search Engine Landscape

The wave of changes has left the entire search engine optimization industry fairly unsteady. But the
basic rules have not changed. Our sites still get the same rankings they did before, only now they get
them on 3 search engines, not just one.

So for SEOs, many of their tricks are no longer as effective as they used to be. But solid site
construction and good quality content can still be counted on to deliver users to you over the long
run.

We have found that, except for the massive fluctuations in Google's results, the basic techniques we
have used over the last years need little modification, since they were based on solid research in the
first place.